From Fox News: Late-night host Stephen Colbert confronted Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker with gerrymandered maps of Illinois congressional districts on Tuesday amid Texas Republicans’ efforts to redraw the state’s congressional map.
Texas House Republicans have introduced a redistricting proposal that could net them five new GOP seats. The draft congressional map, which is likely to change before approval by both state legislative chambers, aims to redraw district lines to include more Republican-leaning areas in Democratic strongholds like Dallas and Houston. The move has prompted Texas Democrats to leave the state in order to halt the vote, and Pritzker put himself at the center of the national discussion by offering refuge in Illinois.
“If you are considering doing a little more redrawing in Illinois, you already have some crazy districts in Illinois. Take a look at this. Look at [district] 17 here. It does that, then it comes up here, and it sneaks around there and goes all the way up here and then goes right over there like that,” Colbert said as he gestured, describing the districts. “Is this common for all states to do?”
Pritzker joked that a kindergarten class drew the map, and called it his independent commission.
Colbert continued to joke about the crazy layout of the map, then asked Pritzker, “So because all states to a certain extent do this, why is what Texas [is] doing particularly egregious in this case?”
Pritzker, accused Texas Republicans of redrawing maps “at the behest of Donald Trump” and “doing it mid-decade.”
“That is extraordinarily rare,” Pritzker claimed. “And the way they are doing it is taking voting rights away from Black and Brown people. They are literally obliterating districts that were written according to the Voting Rights Act. So this is going to end up in court if they are actually able to do it.”
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